MARK DAMON PUCKETT

The drunk man thinks of suicide at the pulpitThe drunk man at the pulpit has given upand wants two bodiesso he can commit suicide twice,thinking this as he preaches to nothing.He sneaks into the church at nightand sleeps, andreeks, but he has never forgottenwhat it means to be clean; he is not
bad,he is okay, he is good; he even thinks it is wrong to touch this preacher’s microphone,but he has nothing elseto do, so he’s come up,and he pretendsto preach to the invisible,and he is drunk, yes, he is drunk,always drunk,but he has somethingto say, knows it is somethingand when he goes to the back of the pewsto sleep under them,he admits he has foundsome places to hideand that maybe onebody, maybe, is enough to think about dying.119 The Paris-American

Mark Damon Puckett teaches in the graduate center at Lenoir-Rhyne University's M.A. in Writing program in downtown Asheville, NC. During his M.F.A. in Fiction at the University of Houston, he studied poetry with Pulitzer-winner Richard Howard, later teaching Poetic Techniques at SUNY-Purchase. His varied work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Crescent Review, Tusculum Review, Act Two, ARTnews, Saveur, USA Today and more. He also received his M.A. in English and M.Litt. in African-American Studies from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He is the author of three books of fiction, The Reclusives, YOU with The Ill-usives and most recently The Killer Detective Novelist. This poem won the 2013 Bread Loaf School of English Robert Haiduke Poetry Prize judged by New Yorker poet, David Huddle. www.markdamonpuckett.com